*This painting is sold but the artist is regularly available in our inventory		Louis-Aimé Japy* Berne 1840-1916 Paris Cattle Grazing by a Pond Oil on canvas 20 x 24 inches (50.8 x 61 cm.) 28 x 31 1/2 inches framed signed and dated lower right: Japy 86 A student of François Louis Français and of Corot, Louis-Aimé Japy made his Salon debut in 1864, during the height of the Barbizon movement. He made trips to Italy early in his career, as was customary for a young artist, but it was the regions of his native Doubs and the Jura that most captured his heart: these regions inspired most of his compositions. Japy exhibited his views of the French countryside regularly at the Salon, medalling in 1870, and earning a second class medal in 1873 and gold medals at both of the Expositions Universelles in 1889 and 1900. In 1883 he was made a member of the Société des Artistes Français, earning him exemption from all future Salon jury selection and the ability to exhibit freely at the Salons. He was recognized again in 1906, when he was elected Chevalier of the Légion d’Honneur. In our painting, Japy depicts a landscape of long, flat pastures, broken here and there by groves of trees. In the foreground, three cows stand beyond the edge of a marshy pond. A peasant woman cloaked in a dark dress with a bright blue apron around her waist and red kerchief covering her hair, stands at the center of the composition with her back to the viewer. She appears to look into the grove of birch trees that closes the rear of the composition. This grove clears to the left and right of the composition, offering the viewer a glimpse of a long, flat horizon. Beyond a pair of cows, at the right of the composition, a path winds into the wood and a plume of white smoke rises above the brush, indicating a chimney with fire burning. Japy paints this calm pastoral scene with vivid tones of green, blue and sienna that reveals a day illuminated a clear, bright sunlight. The clear color and brushy foliage belie the artist’s debt to his master Corot.